White screen after upgrade to 2.3.6

Hi – Reporting that a second site hosted on the same VPS as https://katwestcott.com/ had the identical error message after the Simple Custom Post Order plugin was updated today to 2.3.6

Fatal error: Can’t use method return value in write context in {root-folders}/wp-content/plugins/simple-custom-post-order/simple-custom-post-order.php on line 49

I’ve temporarily disabled the plugin on that site, so the second site is now working.

thank you for assisting

Similar issue here on two sites with this plugin upgrading to the latest version 10 mins ago. Got a blank 500 page with this in console

“Failed to set referrer policy: The value ” is not one of ‘no-referrer’, ‘no-referrer-when-downgrade’, ‘origin’, ‘origin-when-cross-origin’, ‘same-origin’, ‘strict-origin’, ‘strict-origin-when-cross-origin’, or ‘unsafe-url’. The referrer policy has been left unchanged.”

Deactivating plugin restored site.

i got a white screen on one site, the line 49 error on another. different hosts.

eta 3 sites stayed up though!

• This reply was modified 5 years, 11 months ago by emilysparkle.

Hi guys,

Thank you for letting us know about this!
We are investigating this and please rest assured we will get to the bottom of it.
Could you please tell me what version of PHP do you each have?

To find out you can install this plugin: https://www.ads-software.com/plugins/wordpress-php-info/
And after you activate it go to your dashboard > Settings > php info and you will see there the necessary information.

Thank you,
Mihaela

Hi Mihaela

There are now 3 sites on the VPS with the problem I reported – all with same error message. All 3 run PHP 5.6

I found other sites on other VPS and hosts updated to 2.3.6 today without any problems. Since the 3 sites with problems are all on the same VPS, I’ve reported the issue to the VPS webhost to see if anything in that VPS hosting config might be causing the problem. I’ll let you know if they find anything.
Thank you, Steve

Dear Steve,

Thank you so much for letting me know!
We did not experience that issue on our end, so it was a bit tough to investigate, but we have released an update addressing this.
Could you please update and let me know how it goes?

Thank you so much for your patience,
Mihaela

@mplusb

We have the same issue: https://www.chinmayauk.org

Fatal error: Can’t use method return value in write context in /var/sites/c/chinmayauk.org/public_html/wp-content/plugins/simple-custom-post-order/simple-custom-post-order.php on line 49

We can’t even access any page so can’t login into the WP Dashboard to make changes. Please help.

Thanks!

@mplusb

We managed to get our website back online by renaming your plugin’s folder to something else via FTP.

But what’s the proper fix? Thanks

Hello @treestack,

We have just released an update addressing this.
Please update and let me know how it goes.

All the best,
Mihaela

@mplusb – thanks, will let you know

Just installed the 2.3.7 update (via FTP). The plugin won’t activate and the below error is shown:

Fatal error: Can’t use method return value in write context in …/httpdocs/wp-content/plugins/simple-custom-post-order/simple-custom-post-order.php on line 45

@mplusb Just checked php and ashamedly it was 5.4, updating to 7x got everything working again.

@treestack If anyone needs to bring their site back online quickly, the simplest way is to rename the simple-custom-post-order plugin folder, just stick an X at the beginning or similar. For a more lasting fix try checking your php version, your hosting company should be able to adjust this for you easily.

Same here with 2.3.7. – I deleted the ftp-folder and installed the plugin again, but there is the error too:

Fatal error: Can’t use method return value in write context in /mnt/web204/d0/38/5546838/htdocs/wordpress/wp-content/plugins/simple-custom-post-order/simple-custom-post-order.php on line 45

Thank you for the feedback, @jake33!

@trollzack,
Could you please let me know what version of PHP do you have?

Thank you,
Mihaela

Unfortunately still version 5.3

Please reach out to your hosting and ask them to upgrade to a newer version.
This should solve your issue!

Let me know how it goes!

Best regards,
Mihaela